Tuesday, 20 February 2018

Annoyingly, the 'flu has caught me so I'm off work. I managed to get a little bit of painting done yesterday evening, but not a lot. Today was better and working in short bursts I managed to get this unit finished off.

This is the fourth spear & dao unit for my army, and the 19th unit overall. I've got one more unit of infantry left to paint for now. I'll start work on them tomorrow.

For this unit, I decided to freehand the Chinese symbols for "dragon" on the shields of the officer and trumpeter:

It wasn't easy as the surface of the shields is textured, but I think it came out OK.

Saturday, 17 February 2018

I was intending to travel down to Sussex this afternoon, but was feeling shattered so I decided to head down tomorrow morning instead. Which meant I was able to finish this unit off. And that does it for the cavalry (for now at least).

During the longer drying periods, I started work on the next batch - a fourth spear & dao unit.

I should finish painting and varnishing them on Monday and get the basing done on Tuesday night.

Thursday, 15 February 2018

And the second unit of heavy cavalry for the Ming Chinese rolls off the table, onto the blog and into the box file.

After Tuesday evening being a wash-out I was able to catch up a bit this morning as my boiler was having its annual service. I managed to get the final detailing, varnishing, popping off sticks and gluing onto bases done before I headed to work. This evening I got the basing done.

A couple of close-ups to show detail:

I'm going to make a start on finishing the third heavy cavalry unit now and hope to finish painting them tomorrow. With a fair wind, I might manage to get them based up on Saturday before I head off to Sussex.

Tuesday, 13 February 2018

I did promise these in Sunday's post and here they are - the first completed unit of heavy horse archers for the Ming Chinese. They are also the 16th unit I've painted up for this army. Cripes!

These were completed last night, but I've held them over to this evening to keep my posts spaced out. Over the next couple of evenings I'll be working on finishing the second of these units which (if all goes well) will be ready for posting on Thursday or Friday. The third unit should be completed early next week - I'm going to be away this weekend.

Sunday, 11 February 2018

Things didn't go quite as planned this week. It started well on Monday and Tuesday and I got plenty done on the cavalry, then it ground to a halt as I was feeling drained after all my recent colds.

I've made up for it this weekend and took all three units to a well-progressed stage this morning. I then switched to working on a single unit and took it to completion - just the basing to do on them, which will get done tomorrow night. I'll then work on the other two in turn so should get at least one more finished before next weekend.

Tuesday, 6 February 2018

As explained in my Sunday Workbench post, finishing these was delayed a little but they're done now.

With these bases, I can now field a maximum-sized "mob" unit in FoGAM or FoGR and have more bases than I need for ADLG. For FoGAM/FoGR I can have a total of 24 bases, so at some point I might add another 12 bases to the army.

Anyway, I'll leave you with a pic of all twelve bases (the original three are on the right)

Sunday, 4 February 2018

Another week, another cold - just after I'd got over the last one. This winter has been atrocious for them - /i think that four days is the longest break I've had between various bugs since the beginning of October.

Of course, this one just had to be the "nose like a running tap" type so I didn't get any painting done until this weekend.

I have finished the Korean "mob" troops - there'll be a post for them on Tuesday. Once they were out of the way I cracked on with the next batch of figures - 36 Ming/Korean heavy bow cavalry. I've got the base coats, points, washes and white markings done. I've also done the bases in Khaki Grey.

Tomorrow I'll get the tack and eyes done. After that I'll be splitting them into three smaller batches for painting the riders (and probably for doing the basing). So there should be at least one more "finished" post before next weekend. Unless I get hit with yet another cold...